THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

Kathmandu Post, September 26, 2009 SUSHMA JOSHI I remember Asthami, the eighth day of Dashain, from the old days. My grandfather, notorious for his bad temper, would climb down the rickety steps of his older brother’s house, fuming silently by the time the puja was finished and it was time to chop off the goats’ heads. He never had to wait for his food, so the one day in 365 when a row of female goddesses made him wait for his dal-bhatt was always an explosive time. Enforced silence—the patriarchs couldn’t talk till the puja was finished-- made his unvoiced tantrum even more tense. We’d all hush up and walk around whispering because Baba had lost his famous temper. In hindsight, it seems interesting to me that the only force that could silence this patriarch was eight feminine deities. We sacrificed five goats for two families of around 50 people. The goats would be brought out from this little archway into the courtyard with the tamped down earth. We—a row of small children—would sit ...

SUSHMA JOSHI Kathmandu Post 20 September: As a student in the USA, I became used to meeting with Nepalis “sponsored” by American friends. These folks, usually from remote villages, harbored a complex mixture of emotions—sadness at their lot in life, gratitude at their friends (and sometimes a sense of entitlement), hidden annoyance at the often unsubtle ways in which their poverty was pointed out to them, anger at perceived derision of their culture, friction over longterm relationships in which the balance of economic equality never got any better. There were moves to become independent, and sudden cut-offs of relationships that resumed again after long periods of time. Amongst all this, there were lifelong commitments that mirrored family relationships--some more spectacularly dysfunctional than others. The sense of getting a free ride from rich Americans would almost inevitably give way to a sense of responsibility as people realized, after a year or two in New York, that their ric...

Sushma Joshi September 6: This morning, I heard a series of frantic mewing coming from tree foliage twenty feet up in the air. I walked under the thick bouganville, but couldn’t locate the plaintive meows. Then I saw it—a black and tan kitten caught midway in the fork of a straight and bare tree trunk. Its okay, get down now, I said. Motivational speaking, funnily, works on freaked out kittens caught on branches as well as it does on California’s residents. The kitten, heeding my Chicken Soup for The Soul talk, grasped the smooth branch with two paws and slithered down. Halfway down, it balked. Just a few feet now, I intoned in my best Deepak Chopra voice. Then it was down. At first, it didn’t want to come close and hid underneath the car. As I walked towards my garden, it followed me. Now it was miaowing plaintively. Ah, hungry cat. Maybe it would be useful in keeping the garden rats, spectacularly big and destroyers of my bamboos, at bay. I went into my kitchen and cut a piece of che...